


Little Game

by GalaxyAqua



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Bullying, Despair, Gen, Self-Hatred, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyAqua/pseuds/GalaxyAqua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s pen and marker and chalk and paint. But what it is doesn’t really matter. It’s what it says that hurts. Souda-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Game

**Author's Note:**

> a little souda-centric fic written to commemorate the news of the souda manga (even though I admit that I laughed, because even I can't believe such a thing is going to exist)

Weak, cowardly, gross, useless, creepy, weirdo, freak, nerd, crybaby, idiot, stupid, asshole, dumb, disgusting, ugly, filthy, piece of trash, worthless, I hate you, I hate you so much, nobody likes you, just go die already.

The list goes on. It keeps going on and on. There’s pen and marker and chalk and paint. But what it is doesn’t really matter. It’s what it says that hurts. Souda Kazuichi, ten years old, fixes his glasses and swallows his tears, and walks out of the classroom – only to burst into tears once more.

_They’re right, aren’t they?_ They’re always right. He was always proving them right. He’d never change. He’d always be all of those things and more. Nobody cares. He shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t be crying so much, and proving them right again and again.

But there he is. Souda Kazuichi. Ten years old, and the most hated person he’s ever known.

He can’t tell his dad about it this time; he knows what he’d say. His father always says the same things, over and over.

“Grow up, Kazuichi.” He’d say. “Be a man. Men don’t cry, you fucking baby. Do you need me to beat some sense into you? Huh? Do you?”

And again, but with regret.

“You know I love you, don’t you, boy? I want the best for you, and that’s why I don’t want to see you cry.”

And again, but with disappointment.

“Even if you’re the most useless piece of shit I’ve ever met.”

He can’t tell his dad. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

So he stops at the park, just for a little, just to ease the terribly repulsive sobbing, just so he can regain his bearings before making the long walk home. He sits on the swing. A foot appears in his line of sight.

“Hey, Souda.”

He looks up. He doesn’t know who it is, but their face is familiar. They don’t give him time to speak. He hears them cracking their knuckles. He looks down.  

“Guess you haven’t gotten the message yet, have you?”

Through the blur of his tears, he gets the message loud and clear. A fist meets his stomach anyway.

“Why don’t you just die, already?”

Every day of his life, he wonders that too.

* * *

 

When he’s a little older, he starts to ask more questions, and though the questions lead on, he rarely ever finds the answers.

_Why does everyone hate me?_

_What did I do wrong?_

_Why doesn’t anyone want to be friends with me?_

He seeks solace in tinkering, because the clack-clack of metal on metal never makes a nasty comment, or gives him a beating he doesn’t deserve. Emotionless, cold, it may be. But he can make new things. Break the ordinary. Repair the broken.

It’s a nice feeling.  

Sometimes he fucks it up.

His parents screech at him.

But he doesn’t stop – won’t stop for something like a mean word or an angered yell – because he looked at the sky one night and thought ‘I’d like to be up there’ and found himself a dream.

He’s going to make a rocket, motion sickness be damned.

First though! Before the rocket! He’s going to make a mega fast motorbike and it’s going to be awesome!

And before that…! He’ll make other things! Lots of cool things!

It feels good, he thinks, as he screws together his latest project. It’s not a rocket or a bike yet, but one day it would be. The gears in his head come alive. There’s no more time to care about the insults, or the name-calling or the bursts of violence from anyone or anything.

He’s just happy he’s found something he’s good at.

And from the tender age of thirteen, he’s going to work hard to be the very best mechanic the world has ever seen.

That is his one and only hope.

* * *

 

Maybe if he can do cool things, he’ll become one of the cool kids. But it’s not enough, he realizes, to have a talent.

People don’t care about talents all that much – if you’re not attractive, or particularly smart or charismatic, or look the part to go with it.

Ordinary looking people do ordinary things.

He has to look cool to be cool – doing is not nearly enough.

So he watches and waits and tries to figure out the difference between someone who is _cool_ and someone who is _not_. And who decides on these sorts of things, anyway? He really wants to know.

He’ll probably never figure it out though.

What is cool and what isn’t. What he should be and what he shouldn’t be.

It’s not much but his ‘answer’, in fact, comes in the form of his first encounter with somebody aspiring to go to the renowned Hope’s Peak Academy. He thinks. It’s hard to tell. He just doesn’t know.

He hears people talk. That kid must be famous, or something. You gotta be, if Hope’s Peak is after your ass.

“He’s so cool, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, I mean, he’s kind of a jerk, but he’s still really cool, I guess.”

Punk rock kid, walking around like he owns the place. Bad personality, but nice looks. Edgy looks. Mad talent.

Souda Kazuichi, fourteen years old, heads home and dyes his hair a shocking pink. His dad yells at him. His glasses shatter. He goes to buy contacts for his eyesight. Colors are nice. They now match his new hair. His dad yells at him again.

“Pink is not a color for men,” he’s told, and the tone used might imply that he’s breached a severe law and must face punishment where it is due.

“That’s not the point,” he wants to say. “I’ll never be the man you want me to be, anyway. I’m going to be something else. Something cool. Something not quite what you want. But not quite what I want, either.”

Instead, all that leaves his mouth is, “Sorry, dad.”

And the only reply is; “You useless piece of shit.”

* * *

 

Hope’s Peak Academy. He can’t believe it, but by some wayward miracle he gets accepted. His title being a mechanic, or course, because that’s been his dream his entire life and he just so happened to get good at it after hours of painstakingly tearing things apart.

Now, Souda Kazuichi, fifteen years old, has another big dream.

It doesn’t have to do with Princess Sonia Nevermind, but it may or may not cut pretty close.

She is, in a word, perfect. A real life princess at his school… there’s no way something like that wouldn’t catch his attention.

It takes a sentence to fall in like – and even less time to fall in love. But it’s not what he thinks it is, not when he’s still young and naïve. Sonia knows before he does that he doesn’t love her, so she doesn’t let him get close. She’s clever – Miss Sonia – but she is also kind.

She would not break a heart that was sincere.

But others certainly would.

(He’s not at home and he still gets bruises. He doesn’t wear glasses and he still gets punches to the face. He’s not failing any tests and he still gets his hard work ripped to shreds.)

(He’s still the most hated person he’s ever known.)

And eventually, he forgets what kindness is. People say he doesn’t deserve to be here. Doesn’t deserve to exist. Needs to shut up. Stop talking. Stop breathing.

He looks to Sonia, who is his shining light, and she turns and leaves him.

Not once in the year, did Sonia Nevermind try to get along with him or succumb to his advances. His charming ways don’t sway her, and his overbearing personality doesn’t impress her one bit. He goes forwards and backwards, and tries in vain to get her to notice him, but one day she sees him being slammed against open lockers, blood leaking from his nose, and walks away.

She walks away.

And at sixteen, he’s all the more bitter for it.

Because he doesn’t understand.

And he didn’t try to understand.

Because he felt foolishly free at Hope’s Peak and forgot that beneath it all, he had never changed.

(Words on his desk, on his door. They didn’t change much. He just learned to separate the important ones from the ones that didn’t matter.)

(To him, and his overactive mind however, they all mattered.)

(Every word of hatred burned bright and seared themselves into his memory.)

(Because this was how the world saw him.)

Below that sharp exterior, he had never changed.

“Still pathetic as always,” his thought is voiced aloud, and he whips around, trying to locate the source. It’s a beautiful girl – hot damn, like model quality – and she’s staring right at him from across the hallway. He straightens instinctively.

“Hey there,” he says, sounding a lot more confident than he feels.

“Hey yourself.” She replies airily. “Souda Kazuichi, right?”

He feels flattered that such a gorgeous lady knows his name. It almost makes him forget that everyone still hates him.

“Yeah, that’s me. And you? Gonna introduce yourself?”

“Enoshima Junko,” she grins, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “But that’s not important. You look like you need a girl, and I am a girl, so whaddaya say, hotshot? Wanna go out with me?”

And Souda for a second thinks he’s died or something.

It takes him only a second to say, “Yes.”

Her blue eyes narrow, and if he doesn’t know better he’d think the word for that look would be ‘sultry’. But he does know better, or so he thinks, and he forgets about it and lets Junko chatter to him all she likes – as his new and deserving girlfriend.

Forgetting seems easy around a pretty girl like her.

He almost forgets his troubles, when Junko says, “I’ll always be here for you.”

He almost forgets his own emotions, when Junko says, “I’m sorry about all you’ve had to go through.”

He forgets that the first words she ever spoke to him were, “Still pathetic as always.”

Big mistake.

But he thinks he’s in love for real this time.

Like, _forget_ Sonia Nevermind; she was never going to give him the time of day anyway.

At least Junko actually cared.

_Even if,_

“Grow up, Kazuichi!”

_She reminded him,_

“Hey, you know I love you, right? Just do it for me. It’s for your own sake, you baby!”

_So much of,_

“Oh, you useless piece of shit! Can’t you do anything? I told you it had to be perfect! What are you doing!? Ugh, you always screw everything up!”

_His father._

“Huh? Why’re you looking at me like that? You fucking moron, just spit it out.”

“N-no, it’s nothing – well, it’s nothing to do with you. Don’t worry ‘bout it.” He grins, and rubs the back of his neck. “It’s cool, babe, just leave it alone.”

“ _Babe,_ ” she echoes as she clicks her tongue. “You know you shouldn’t keep secrets from me. I can help you! I know what’s best for you, after all!”

* * *

 

Eighteen years old, and he’s no longer just a boy. He’s no longer the child who cried after being the victim of one too many insults and one too many kicks to the stomach. He’s no longer the child who cried after being rejected, after being scared half to death, after being screamed at for being a failure.

No longer the child who fell stupidly in love with a kind-hearted princess, only to drop the very thought of her for someone easier – someone more cunning, more nasty, more _controlling_.

The child who chose Enoshima Junko, only to have it explode in his face.

Horrors he’d never speak of, words he’d never be able to wash from his memory – that was what Enoshima did to him, and he was naïve no longer. Innocent no longer.

Bully? Oh, no.

To bully was to say it was one-sided, was it not? It was not one-sided. He let her do it. He accepted what came to him, whether it was cigarettes to his skin, or nail clippers to his ears.

She had his heart and mind and soul in her hands, and could mold him – bend him – at will. She still can. One too many beatings in the night, and words that make his blood run cold, and too many hard-hitting break-ups and get-togethers that always end up in one place.

His return right back to her side.   

“Let’s kill your family,” she says one day, cheer in her voice and blood on his lips.

He agrees in a heartbeat. She kicks him, sharp heel to his shin. It burns.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she coos, but Souda Kazuichi does not react. He does not flutter or stammer or cry or laugh – emotions like that are lost on him now, so battered down by hate that he’s forgotten how to feel anything but _hated_ anymore. And with the feeling of being perpetually despised… came despair.

It hurt, oh god, it had hurt. But then, there came a point where he couldn’t feel anything anymore.

And that felt amazing.

Souda Kazuichi, nineteen years old, dry from all the tears he’s cried, joins Junko’s army of despair.

Souda Kazuichi, nineteen years old, executes students from Hope’s Peak Academy with a press of a button and relishes in their pain.

Souda Kazuichi, nineteen years old, no longer remembers who he is anymore.

Nineteen years old, he’s an epitome of destruction; guns down his family, guns down his city.

Only nineteen, and he’s a killer in the shadows, lashing back at the world who hated him so.

Sufferer for nineteen years. Both guilty and innocent suffer for his revenge.

But the damage had already been done.

In executing others, he executed himself.

_When he wakes up from the simulation, his first thought is that he deserved to die._

Souda Kazuichi never stood a chance.


End file.
